Expert of this article: Zhao Sijia, author of “Guide to the Use of the Brain”, post-doctoral fellow in neuroscience at University College London The National Day holiday ended in an instant. Did you meet the person you like during this happy holiday? Have you ever experienced a blind date? Have you ever met love at first sight? Love at first sight, not as susceptible to internal and external factors as long-term probation, is too fast and almost impossible to control. Of course, there are many people who don’t believe in love at first sight. If you don’t understand each other’s character, how can you tell if you like it just by looking at your face? Do you like this person’s face and clothes? Since we are doing scientific popularization, in the face of such a problem, of course, we must be truthful! What happens to the brain after falling in love? When you like someone, there is a chemical reaction in your brain. The brain makes dopamine quickly. It can be said that the brain in love is extremely excited. The dark red areas of the brain in the image above show the areas of the brain that are active in passionate love, which is quite different from other types of love, such as affection.
Is there a scientific basis for love at first sight? According to a 2017 survey by a dating site, 62% of women and 72% of men believe love at first sight is real. And I believe that the post-90s and post-85s fall in love at first sight than the post-80s and post-70s. Is there a possibility of love at first sight? We know that memory is unreliable – just as we always worry about the taste of food in our hearts, but we find it to be slightly worse than we remembered.
Not only do our memories change over time, but do we subconsciously glorify memories of first encounters because you have a good relationship with your partner? To this end, in 2017 researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands arranged about 400 blind dates with about 396 participants. After the first meeting, immediately count whether the two sides fell in love at first sight.
There are 4 harvests:
- Love at first sight is not a mere memory bias. At least, some people do say that after the first meeting, they fell in love at first sight with the person they just met, at least have a strong goodwill, and hope to continue to develop with the other party. However, among these people, love at first sight is extremely rare.
- Many of the people who have just experienced love at first sight are men. This may be related to the selected picture. In the experiment, the participants provided a unified Facebook page, and the scientists chose a photo with a smile. Previous research has shown that female users dislike men with smiling photos as faces, and instead, men like smiling female faces.